Eid? What Eid?

Ramadan (the Muslim month of fasting) ended, full of sorrow, full of terrible events. Christians, the natives of Mosul, who've been there for about 1800 years were displaced for the first time in history this month by ISIL, which committed other atrocities not only against the other minorities in the city, but against sites considered as holy to the city's majority Sunni Muslims, such as Prophet Younis (Jonah) mosque, Prophet Sheet (Seth) mosque, and Prophet Jarjees (Georges) mosque; all sacred to Muslims an Christians alike. 

And then came the Eid (the feast), with no real sense of happiness; although many people (especially in Baghdad) have found a breather in it, as they took to shopping streets which were turned into pedestrian streets for the occasion, with some young men carrying small drum-like instruments. But one would still sense a feeling of unrest in the air, amid the tension of the security forces and the unorganized traffic jams created by different road closures. 

I really find no sense of this Eid, with many people suffering, and with a third of my country under terrorist occupation, while the world is looking on, totally uninterested, at the misery of this nation and its people.

Anyways, for several times when Eid comes for the past decade or so, one cannot really do without recalling a verse by Iraqi-born poet Abu Tayeb Al-Mutanabbi asking if Eid will "be the same and even with more sorrow, or will you be the sign of new things?", and I guess, with the current circumstances that the answer would be more sorrow.
Hopefully not.

Back to Writing Again!

Or as the song once said: "On the road again".

Back in the last days of 2005 when i started to write on my first blog, the situation in Iraq forced me to write, because i had no other window to express my ideas and opinions. I continued writing for 4 years, when i got eventually to busy/too lazy to maintain the first blog. 

Then, so many things happened to me during the 5 years between 2009 and 2014, but i wrote only three time on this blog, back in 2011.

Unfortunately, and after years of pseudo-stability, the situation in Iraq deteriorated sharply and crazily. The conditions in Syria, and the appearance of the extremist group ISIL, which occupied about a third of Iraq in a night's day, have changed everything in Iraq, hopefully not forever, because they are all bad changes, filled with blood and misery; that in addition to the extreme stupidity, complete absence of professionalism, stubbornness and selfishness from the Iraqi gov't side. 

Here we are...  caught between Charbdys and Scylla, like Ulysses... But the hope for Iraq's return, unlike Ulysses, is so, so far away. 

Perhaps the most that we can do, like William Dean Howells once wrote: "... is to hope for the best till we know the worst. Of course, we shall make the best of the worse when it comes."